Harlem Rhapsody

by Victoria Christopher Murray

“Dr. Du Bois theorizes that while white folks can simply be American, Negroes cannot. Because of the way America treats its Negro citizens, we must live separate as Negroes first, and then as Americans. It is a dual existence. And because the two identities cannot coalesce, we are left to live two lives, have two minds of thought and…two souls.”

Race determined when we could speak, what we could say, where we could live, how we were educated—race was the burden every Negro bore, and that verity left us with a double consciousness that we had to chart through every minute of each day.